This book is not only a major twentieth-century contribution to Dostoevsky’s studies, but also one of the most important theories of the novel produced in our century. As a modern reinterpretation of poetics, it bears comparison with Aristotle.“Bakhtin’s statement on the dialogical nature of artistic creation, and his differentiation of this from a history of monological commentary, is profoundly original and illuminating. This is a classic work on Dostoevsky and a statement of importance to critical theory.” Edward Wasiolek“Concentrating on the (...) particular features of ‘Dostoevskian discourse,’ how Dostoevsky structures a hero and a plot, and what it means to write dialogically, Bakhtin concludes with a major theoretical statement on dialogue as a category of language. One of the most important theories of the novel in this century.” The Bloomsbury Review. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of the naming crisis of modern society. The sequences by which the social and cultural history of the West is ordered, represented by the evolution of economics, technology, religion, forms of capital and wealth, communications, following the technological acceleration of time, coexist with each other, compete for primacy, creating a society of atomized subjects who have ceased to understand their place in the history of society. This situation is described in the article as (...) an identity crisis. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the gaps that have been discovered in attempts to identify society, which are the object of criticism. The article refers to the tradition of explanatory modeling of social interactions in terms of psychopathology and psychiatry. The crisis of the identity of society is illustrated through the images of madness in modern art culture. The article hypothesizes that there is an unspoken ban on naming a society associated with the crisis of capitalism in the transition from disciplinary societies to control societies. Culture's interest in insanity serves as an indicator of a social crisis. The evolution of cultural interest in the figure of a madman from a frightening "outcast" to an attractive "rebel" is shown. The article suggests the tasks of critical philosophy that coincide with the tasks of caring for social health. The idea of the need for the deprivation of mental illness is expressed. Mental health care is considered as a social task. (shrink)

The subject of the research is utopian discourse, which unites all the variety of concepts related in one way or another to utopia, utopian dimension of reality and understanding of the Future (utopian element, utopian impulse, utopian optics, utopianism, utopian consciousness, utopian thinking, dystopia, etc.). Special attention is paid to the study of the explanatory and predictive potential of utopian discourse, identifying its boundaries and analysis of the relationship with ideological discourse. The conceptualization of utopian discourse is based on an (...) instrumental approach to utopia, which is complemented by the communicative approach and the interpretive concept of culture by K. Geertz, which justifies the possibility of considering utopian discourse as a semantic and symbolic matrix. The novelty of the research is to identify and substantiate the exaggerated dichotomy of thinking and otherness as the structure-forming elements of utopian discourse. This contributed to the assessment of utopian discourse as a peculiar but viable form of reflection of political reality and the construction, consolidation and comprehension of values. The proposed algorithm of thinking with dichotomies made it possible to trace the process of constructing utopian discourse on the basis of a pyramid of dichotomies, consisting of system-forming, key and peripheral dichotomies. The article clarifies that the otherness of utopian discourse is manifested in the historicity, radicality and inextricable connection of utopian discourse with the Present. The indicated specificity of utopian discourse has led to the clarification of the reasons for the negative and/or skeptical attitude towards utopia and utopian discourse, as well as to the definition of its strengths and weaknesses. The authors conclude that despite the identified shortcomings, which often lead utopias to periodic displacement from the framework of actual political life, utopian discourse can have a significant impact on the change and development of society. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explore the relationship between Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin’s theoretical apparatus and ideas of the immediate precursors of the Jena Romantik school of German Romanticism: Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) and Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). In doing so, it examines the themes and treatments that are common to these two thinkers and Bakhtin, tracing the tradition of anti-systematic thought through Hamann, Nietzsche and Bakhtin, and the transmission of Herder’s philosophy of Bildung through the Russian cultural milieu and Goethe. (...) Initially, the paper briefly outlines the early German Romantic ‘school’ of philosophy as a prelude to a more detailed examination of the ways in which Bakhtin assimilated German philosophy in general. The paper’s section on Hamann commences with a review of his background, using this as a basis for establishing connections between Hamann’s approach to communication and that of Bakhtin, based on a common epistemology focused on the self. The section on Herder is centred on his concept of Bildung and his historicist approach to literature, both of which interests Bakhtin shared. The paper then examines a number of conduits for Herder’s thought to Bakhtin, including Kant and Goethe. The paper concludes by examining Isaiah Berlin’s notion of the ‘Counter-Enlightenment’—in which movement he includes both Hamann and Herder—and the extent to which Bakhtin could be said to form part of this tradition. (shrink)

Is the science of moral cognition usefully modelled on aspects of Universal Grammar? Are human beings born with an innate 'moral grammar' that causes them to analyse human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness as they analyse human speech in terms of its grammatical structure? Questions like these have been at the forefront of moral psychology ever since John Mikhail revived them in his influential work on the linguistic analogy and its implications for (...) jurisprudence and moral theory. In this seminal book, Mikhail offers a careful and sustained analysis of the moral grammar hypothesis, showing how some of John Rawls' original ideas about the linguistic analogy, together with famous thought experiments like the trolley problem, can be used to improve our understanding of moral and legal judgement. (shrink)

Scientists from various disciplines have begun to focus attention on the psychology and biology of human morality. One research program that has recently gained attention is universal moral grammar (UMG). UMG seeks to describe the nature and origin of moral knowledge by using concepts and models similar to those used in Chomsky's program in linguistics. This approach is thought to provide a fruitful perspective from which to investigate moral competence from computational, ontogenetic, behavioral, physiological and phylogenetic perspectives. In this article, (...) I outline a framework for UMG and describe some of the evidence that supports it. I also propose a novel computational analysis of moral intuitions and argue that future research on this topic should draw more directly on legal theory. (shrink)

The aim of the dissertation is to formulate a research program in moral cognition modeled on aspects of Universal Grammar and organized around three classic problems in moral epistemology: What constitutes moral knowledge? How is moral knowledge acquired? How is moral knowledge put to use? Drawing on the work of Rawls and Chomsky, a framework for investigating -- is proposed. The framework is defended against a range of philosophical objections and contrasted with the approach of developmentalists like Piaget and Kohlberg. (...) ;One chapter consists of an interpretation of the analogy Rawls draws in A Theory of Justice between moral theory and generative linguistics. A second chapter clarifies the empirical significance of Rawls' linguistic analogy by formulating a solution to the problem of descriptive adequacy with respect to a class of commonsense moral intuitions, including those discussed in the trolley problem literature originating in the work of Foot and Thomson. Three remaining chapters defend Rawls' linguistic analogy against some of its critics. In response to Hare's objection that Rawls' conception of moral theory is too empirical and insufficiently normative, it is argued that Hare fails to acknowledge both the centrality of the problem of empirical adequacy in the history of moral philosophy and the complexity of Rawls' approach to the problem of normative adequacy. In response to Nagel's claim that the analogy between moral theory and linguistics is false because whatever native speakers agree on is English, but whatever ordinary men agree in condemning is not necessarily wrong, it is argued that the criticism ignores both Rawls' use of the competence-performance distinction and the theory-dependence of the corresponding distinction in linguistics. In response to Dworkin's claim that Rawls' conception of moral theory is incompatible with naturalism and presupposes constructivism, it is argued that Dworkin's distinction between naturalism and constructivism represents a false antithesis; neither is an accurate interpretation of the model of moral theory Rawls describes in A Theory of Justice. The thesis concludes by situating Rawls' linguistic analogy within the context of broader debates in metaethics, democratic theory, natural law theory, and the theory of moral development. (shrink)

We argue that the most‐promising area of clinical application of microarrays in the foreseeable future is the diagnostics and monitoring of infectious diseases. Microarrays for the detection and characterization of human pathogens have already found their way into clinical practice in some countries. After discussing the persistent, yet often underestimated, importance of infectious diseases for public health, we consider the technologies that are best suited for the detection and clinical investigation of pathogens. Clinical application of microarray technologies for the detection (...) of mycobacteria, Bacillus anthracis, HIV, hepatitis and influenza viruses, and other major pathogens, as well as the analysis of their drug‐resistance patterns, illustrate our main thesis. BioEssays 30:673–682, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

My primary aims in this paper are to explain what exploitation is, when it’s wrong, and what makes it wrong. I argue that exploitation is not always wrong, but that it can be, and that its wrongness cannot be fully explained with familiar moral constraints such as those against harming people, coercing them, or using them as a means, or with familiar moral obligations such as an obligation to rescue those in distress or not to take advantage of people’s vulnerabilities. (...) Its deepest wrongness, I argue, lies in our moral obligation not to extract excessive benefits from people who cannot, or cannot reasonably, refuse our offers. (shrink)

This book provides brief expositions of the central concepts in the field of Global Studies. Former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev says, “The book is intelligent, rich in content and, I believe, necessary in our complex, turbulent, and fragile world.” 300 authors from 50 countries contributed 450 entries. The contributors include scholars, researchers, and professionals in social, natural, and technological sciences. They cover globalization problems within ecology, business, economics, politics, culture, and law. This interdisciplinary collection provides a (...) basis for understanding the concepts and methods within global studies and for accessing lengthier and more technical research in the field. The articles treat such important topics as the biosphere, ozone depletion, land resources and pollution, world health challenges, education, global modeling, sustainable development, war, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism. The book also promotes academic cooperation, political dialogue, and mutual understanding across diverse traditions and national identities that are needed to engage successfully the many daunting challenges of globalization. (shrink)

Most of the time our utterances are automatically interpreted as speech acts: as assertions, conjectures and testimonies; as orders, requests and pleas; as threats, offers and promises. Surprisingly, the cognitive correlates of this essential component of human communication have received little attention. This book fills the gap by providing a model of the psychological processes involved in interpreting and understanding speech acts. The theory is framed in naturalistic terms and is supported by data on language development and on autism spectrum (...) disorders. Mikhail Kissine does not presuppose any specific background and addresses a crucial pragmatic phenomenon from an interdisciplinary perspective. This is a valuable resource for academic researchers and graduate and undergraduate students in pragmatics, semantics, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and philosophy of language. (shrink)

When is it immoral to take advantage of another person for one's own benefit? For some, such as Ruth Sample, John Roemer, and Will Kymlicka, the answer at least partly depends on whether what one takes advantage of is the fact that this person is, or has been, the victim of injustice. I argue, however, that whether person A wrongly exploits person B is wholly unrelated to whether A takes advantage of the fact that B is, or was, the victim (...) of injustice. I also develop a positive account regarding which personal attributes one should not exploit for personal gain. (shrink)

Could a computer be programmed to make moral judgments about cases of intentional harm and unreasonable risk that match those judgments people already make intuitively? If the human moral sense is an unconscious computational mechanism of some sort, as many cognitive scientists have suggested, then the answer should be yes. So too if the search for reflective equilibrium is a sound enterprise, since achieving this state of affairs requires demarcating a set of considered judgments, stating them as explanandum sentences, and (...) formulating a set of algorithms from which they can be derived. The same is true for theories that emphasize the role of emotions or heuristics in moral cognition, since they ultimately depend on intuitive appraisals of the stimulus that accomplish essentially the same tasks. Drawing on deontic logic, action theory, moral philosophy, and the common law of tort, particularly Terry's five-variable calculus of risk, I outline a formal model of moral grammar and intuitive jurisprudence along the foregoing lines, which defines the abstract properties of the relevant mapping and demonstrates their descriptive adequacy with respect to a range of common moral intuitions, which experimental studies have suggested may be universal or nearly so. Framing effects, protected values, and implications for the neuroscience of moral intuition are also discussed. (shrink)

This article provides a brief analysis of the life, work, and character of Nikolai Berdyaev. He is described as both a captive and apologist of freedom, and as an influential representative of existential personalism.

_Russian Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century: An Anthology_ presents a variety of contemporary philosophic problems found in the works of prominent Russian thinkers, ranging from social and political matters and pressing cultural issues to insights into modern science and mounting global challenges.

In this comment on Joshua Greene's essay, The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul, I argue that a notable weakness of Greene's approach to moral psychology is its neglect of computational theory. A central problem moral cognition must solve is to recognize (i.e., compute representations of) the deontic status of human acts and omissions. How do people actually do this? What is the theory which explains their practice?

In _Theory of Religious Cycles: Tradition, Modernity and the Bahá’í Faith_ Mikhail Sergeev offers a new interpretation of the Soviet period of Russian history by developing a theory of religious cycles, which he applies to modernity and all major world religions.

Mikhail L. Gasparov. Intertextual analysis today. The paper provides a discussion about recent results and perspectives of intertextual analysis — the method that has been a contemporary with Tartu-Moscow school. The connections between the classical philological methods and intertextual analysis are described, together with specifying the concept of intertext and emphasizing the need for the correctness of a researcher, because such an analysis always carries a danger of overinterpretation. Several examples are used to illustrate how the imagination of a (...) researcher can create arbitrary allusions that are not based on the original text and are usually misleading. As a result, the text under study will not become more clear, vice versa, it turns to be less understandable. (shrink)

Mikhail L. Gasparov. Intertextual analysis today. The paper provides a discussion about recent results and perspectives of intertextual analysis — the method that has been a contemporary with Tartu-Moscow school. The connections between the classical philological methods and intertextual analysis are described, together with specifying the concept of intertext and emphasizing the need for the correctness of a researcher, because such an analysis always carries a danger of overinterpretation. Several examples are used to illustrate how the imagination of a (...) researcher can create arbitrary allusions that are not based on the original text and are usually misleading. As a result, the text under study will not become more clear, vice versa, it turns to be less understandable. (shrink)

Mikhail L. Gasparov. Intertextual analysis today. The paper provides a discussion about recent results and perspectives of intertextual analysis — the method that has been a contemporary with Tartu-Moscow school. The connections between the classical philological methods and intertextual analysis are described, together with specifying the concept of intertext and emphasizing the need for the correctness of a researcher, because such an analysis always carries a danger of overinterpretation. Several examples are used to illustrate how the imagination of a (...) researcher can create arbitrary allusions that are not based on the original text and are usually misleading. As a result, the text under study will not become more clear, vice versa, it turns to be less understandable. (shrink)

Inspired by the views by the American educationalist Henry Giroux on the role teachers and educationalists should be playing in the time of postmodernism and by Abraham Maslow's concept of biological idioscyncrasy, the author discusses how the concepts of the dialogues created by the representatives of Norwegian Dialogue Pedagogy, Hans Skjervheim, Jon Hellesnes, and Lars Løvlie, can be applied in the area of higher education. The aim of pedagogy in the time of postmodernism is to provide learners with knowledge and (...) skills that will allow them to earn a living, maintain democracy and fight social, racial or gender injustice. This can be achieved only if educationalists provide for educating thinking and emancipated individuals and accordingly consider the issues of identities, ethics, differences, language, transformative intellectuals, and biological idiosyncrasy. The main pedagogical function of the dialogue concepts is to encourage Bildung by enlightening learners to seen and unseen power and authority relations. The dialogue can have a form of a discussion in class, at meetings, in talk between a teacher and a learner, and parents and a child, where everyone should be allowed to speak his or her mind. The dialogue in instructional situations is also understood as a dialogue in a broad sense, including texts in the text-books. Depending on the type of problem that is discussed, a dialogue can take many different forms, all of which can and should be used in supervising graduate and post-graduate students, as the use of the concepts will promote emancipation and self-determination. When it comes to the issues of ethics, transformative intellectuals and biological idiosyncrasy, the use of the concepts should be an approach of choice. However, the author argues that the dialogue concepts do not meet the requirement for the language that Giroux suggests that pedagogy in the time of postmodernism should use, and are based on assumptions that partly conflict with the postmodern understanding of the truth. The author proposes that a new type of a dialogue, the dialogue that allows existence of several narratives at the same time, should be developed. (shrink)

This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of Russian literature, culture, and thought gives for the first time an extensive and detailed examination of the development of Russian thought during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic account of Russian thought in the second half of the 20th century. In doing so, he provides new insights into previously ignored areas such as Russian (...) liberalism, personalism, structuralism, neo-rationalism, and culturology. Epstein shows how Russian philosophy and culture has long been trapped in an intellectual prison of its own making as it sought to create its own utopia. However, he demonstrates that it is time to reappraise Russian philosophical thought and cultural theory, now freed from the bonds of totalitarianism. We are left with not only a new and exciting interpretation of Russian thought, but also an opportunity to rethink our own intellectual heritage. (shrink)

I argue against the view that there is intrinsic value in making one's own decisions about the direction and shape of one's life.

Lines 27.14–17 of the text published by Justin Stover as Apuleius, De Platone 3 are printed by him as follows: quorum [sc. animalium] inmortalia esse quae in caelo sint; idcirco illa ordine cieri et eodem semper modo et alioquin esse prudentia.Of them [sc. animals], the immortal animals are those which are in the heavens; thus they move in an ordered pattern in the same way, and in addition, they are rational.

The KCTD family includes tetramerization (T1) domain containing proteins with diverse biological effects. We identified a novel member of the KCTD family, BTBD10. A comprehensive analysis of protein‐protein interactions (PPIs) allowed us to put forth a number of testable hypotheses concerning the biological functions for individual KCTD proteins. In particular, we predict that KCTD20 participates in the AKT‐mTOR‐p70 S6k signaling cascade, KCTD5 plays a role in cytokinesis in a NEK6 and ch‐TOG‐dependent manner, KCTD10 regulates the RhoA/RhoB pathway. Developmental regulator KCTD15 (...) represses AP‐2α and contributes to energy homeostasis by suppressing early adipogenesis. TNFAIP1‐like KCTD proteins may participate in post‐replication DNA repair through PCNA ubiquitination. KCTD12 may suppress the proliferation of gastrointestinal cells through interference with GABAb signaling. KCTD9 deserves experimental attention as the only eukaryotic protein with a DNA‐like pentapeptide repeat domain. The value of manual curation of PPIs and analysis of existing high‐throughput data should not be underestimated. (shrink)

A translation from Russian into English of Alexandre Kojève's narrative article, taken from his diary of 1920. Foremost, it is a literary piece. Descartes and Buddha appear to the narrator as part of a reverie or dream. They engage in dialogue. Soon, their exchange and the dream itself are disrupted, and the narrative ends. An articulation of historical difference is not the aim of this piece; rather, the dialogue stages through its characters the procession of dialectical reasoning. As a document (...) of intellectual history, it shows clearly the beginnings in the manner of thought of the philosopher who later became so instrumental for the interpretation of Hegel in the 20th century. (shrink)

Это умная, хорошо написанная, информативная книга-исследование. Адресована историкам и антиковедам, а также широкому кругу читателей.

The paper proposes an idea of explicating the invariant universal structure of dialogue through the mathematics of knots and braids, which is relevant, both for the development of particular models of communication and/or dialogue, and for constructing a general theory of dialogue, or the theory of utterances. The possibility of modeling dialogue with the help of the mathematics of braids and knots—categories, entities and their attributes—is shown by use of some well-known examples such as parts of the sentence in grammar. (...) Entities and their attributes can be considered as knots, either right or false. The idea is to visualize the chains of these entities: to formalize them not to keep in mind, neither in the text, but to work with them graphically.Nodes, as final structures, and braids that generate them, allow to reveal paradigmatic anomies, conflicts, logical and ethical disagreements, etc., and vice versa: “synonimies,” mutual understanding, unanimity, in a fundamentally new format of perception and understanding of the context of genesis (braids) and results (knots) of dialogue.The visualization of verbal utterance on the basis of the knot and braid mathematics is a significant step towards formalizing the theories of dialogue, both in general theoretical and purely practical plans. The latter is analyzed by the example of the person’s inner dialogue with herself/himself in making decisions: rational and/or irrational (emotional), which allows conducting a specific work with clients of psychotherapy, coaching, management consulting, mediation, etc. (shrink)

A popular view among autonomy theorists is that facts about the history of a person's desires, and specifically facts about how they were formed or acquired, matter crucially to her autonomy. I argue that while there is an important relationship between a person's autonomy and the history of her desires, a person's autonomy does not depend on how her desires were formed or acquired. I argue that a desire's autonomy lies not in its origins but in whether its bearer has (...) a history of having engaged with it in the right sort of way. I argue that this view has important advantages, and no obvious disadvantages, over its historical and its non-historical rivals. (shrink)

In this guest column, Epstein offers “a new sign” that, he argues, resolves difficulties that have arisen in many theories and practices, including linguistics, semiotics, literary theory, poetics, aesthetics, ecology, ecophilology, eco-ethics, metaphysics, theology, psychology, and phenomenology. The new sign, a pair of quotation marks around a blank space, signfies the absence of any sign. Most generally, “ ” relates to the blank space that surrounds and underlies a text; by locating “ ” within the text, the margins are brought (...) inside and can become the focus of attention. Not only the margins but also the material background of a text (the page or screen) can be brought forward and focused on through the transparency of the sign “ ”, in which case “ ” becomes a sign of itself. Consubstantial with its medium, therefore, this sign is both relative and universal: “ ” is the same everywhere, on every surface, in every language, and also in the arts. Epstein analyzes works by Rauschenberg, Malevich, Ilya Kabakov, and Vasilisk Gdenov in the visual arts, as well as music by John Cage, to demonstrate the usefulness of his new sign for aesthetics and art criticism. Each discipline, he argues, has its own nonspeakable conditions and assumptions that it needs to bring inside disciplinary frontiers. At the frontier of language, “ ” is both inside and outside, and therefore can express the nonspeakable condition of speakability. In concluding, Epstein suggests that the task of the avant-garde in theory today is to develop a “negative semiotics”: a semiotics of nonsigns, modeled on negative (apophatic) theology. (shrink)

One of the most influential arguments in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science is Chomsky's argument from the poverty of the stimulus. In this response to an essay by Chandra Sripada, I defend an analogous argument from the poverty of the moral stimulus. I argue that Sripada's criticism of moral nativism appears to rest on the mistaken assumption that the learning target in moral cognition consists of a series of simple imperatives, such as "share your toys" or "don't hit other children." (...) In fact, the available evidence suggests that the moral competence of adults and even young children is considerably more complex and exhibits many characteristics of a well-developed legal code, including abstract theories of crime, tort, contract, and agency. Since the emergence of this knowledge cannot be explained by appeals to explicit instruction, or to any known processes of imitation, internalization, socialization and the like, there are grounds for concluding it may be innate. Simply put, to explain the development of intuitive jurisprudence in each individual, we must attribute unconscious knowledge and complex mental operations to her that go well beyond anything she has been taught. (shrink)